True Legends
The items in this category are stories and messages about real things that are not trivial or out of date. While these are real, please don't create another chain letter out of them by sending them to everyone you know with an admonishment to send them on. Read about them here and elsewhere on the Internet.
The Americans by Gordon Sinclair  Afghanistan Women  W32.Vote Trojan Warning  WTC Face In The Smoke  Firefighter's Day Petition  Appreciate Your Freedom Message	Outback in Afghanistan Story  Nuclear Picnic Story  Exploding Whale Story  Utah's Field of Flags  Charlie Daniels Speaks on Camp X-Ray

The Americans by Gordon Sinclair

This particular chainletter started making the rounds again this month after the terrible 
tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. Several people have written us, thinking they 
have found another hoax, however this one describes a real event. 

Gordon Sinclair was a respected radio commentator for a Canadian radio station who died 
in 1984. He made the following speech in 1973, just after we pulled out of Vietnam. You can 
find out more about Mr. Sinclair at the following link. I was there when this speech was made 
and I am truly sorry that I didn't hear it at that time. 

http://www.rcc.ryerson.ca/schools/rta/ccf/personal/hof/sincla_g.html

As most of the chain letters contain partial or damaged copies of this speech, I obtained a 
complete copy from the web site listed above, which also contains audio links so you can 
listen to the speech as it was originally broadcast. 

"LET'S BE PERSONAL"    Broadcast June 5, 1973      CFRB, Toronto, Ontario

Topic: "The Americans" 
 

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges
this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 
41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most 
generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth. 

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the 
Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did. 

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, 
the rich bottom land of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to 
help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of 
war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None 
of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. 

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and 
their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. 

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have 
been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped. 

The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into 
discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent 
war-mongering Americans. 

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States 
dollar build its own airplanes. 

Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing 
Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all 
international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even 
consider putting a man or women on the moon? 

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy 
and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, 
not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans 
put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued 
and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian 
laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here. 

When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 
'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else 
build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. 

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the 
Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went 
broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times 
when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. 

Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't 
think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. 

Our neighbors have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them 
kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are 
entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. 

I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And 
finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning 
that it was broke. 

This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody...but 
nobody... has helped.
 
 

Afghanistan Women

The following Internet petition concerning the civil rights of Afghanistan women has been making 
the rounds and it is true. However, an Internet petition has no validity at all as no signature can be 
checked or validated. The other problem with this petition is that this is the latest way for Internet spammers to get huge lists of valid e-mail addresses. If you are concerned about this topic go to 
one of the websites that are concerned about this issue such as: RAWA.

    This is an actual petition, and
    "signatures" will be lost if you drop the line.
  
  
  Dear Friends,
 
  Please do not ignore this email.
  This is something that we as women and
  essentially as human beings need to support - I
  don't know if this is going to help but take 3 minutes out of
  your life to do your part.
 
  Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is waging a
  war upon women.  Since the Taliban took power in
  1996, women have had to wear burqua and have been
  beaten and stoned in public for not having the
  proper attire, even if this means simply not
  having the mesh covering in front of their eyes.
 
  One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of
  fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her
  arm(!) while she was driving. Another was stoned
  to death for trying to leave the country
  with a man that was not a relative.
 
  Women are not allowed to work or even go out in
  public without a male relative; professional
  women such as professors, translators, doctors,
  lawyers, artists and writers have been forced
  from their jobs and stuffed into their homes.
 
  Homes where a woman is present must have their
  windows painted so that she can never be seen by
  outsiders They must wear silent shoes so that they
  are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for
  the slightest misbehavior. Because they cannot work,
  those without male  relatives or husbands are either
  starving to death or begging on the street,
  even if they hold Ph.D.s.
 
  Depression is becoming so  widespread that it has
  reached emergency levels. There is no way in such
  an extreme Islamic society to know the
  suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers
  are estimating that the suicide rate among women
  must be extraordinarily high: those who cannot
  find proper medication and treatment for severe
  depression and would rather take their lives than
  live in such conditions.
 
  At one of the rare hospitals for women, a
  reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies
  lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their
  burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything,
  but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and
  were seen crouched in corners, perpetually
  rocking or crying, most of them in fear.
 
  When what little medication that is left finally
  runs out, one doctor is considering leaving these
  women in front of the president's residence as a
  form of protest.
 
  It is at the point where the term "human rights
  violations" has become an understatement.
  Husbands have the power of life and death over
  their women relatives, especially their wives, but an
  angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat
  a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of
  flesh or offending them in the slightest way.
 
 
  Women enjoyed relative freedom: to work, to dress
  generally as they wanted, and to drive and appear
  in public alone until only 1996.
 
  The rapidity of this transition is the main
  reason for the depression and suicide; Women who
  were once educators or doctors or simply used to
  basic human freedoms are now severely restricted
  and treated as subhuman in the name of right-wing
  fundamentalist Islam.
 
 
  It is not  their tradition or 'culture', but it
  is alien to them, and it is extreme even for
  those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule.
  Everyone has a right to a tolerable human
  existence, even if they are women in a Muslim
  country.
 
  If we can threaten military force in Kosovo the
  name of human rights for the sake of ethnic
  Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly
  express peaceful outrage at the oppression,
  murder and injustice committed against women by
  the Taliban.
 
  STATEMENT:
  In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of
  women in Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE
  and deserves action by the United Nations and that
  the current situation overseas will not be tolerated.
 
  Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere, and it is
  UNACCEPTABLE for women in 2000 to be treated as
  subhuman and as so much property. Equality and
  human decency is a fundamental RIGHT, not
  a freedom to be granted, whether one lives in
  Afghanistan or elsewhere.
 
  DIRECTIONS:
 
  PLEASE COPY this email onto a new message, sign
  the bottom and Forward it to everyone on your
  distribution lists.
  If you receive this list With
  more than 300 names on it, please e-mail a copy
  of it to:  

  Even if you decide not to sign, please be
  considerate and do not kill the petition.
 
  Thank you!

W32.Vote Trojan Warning

This virus warning is real, but don't get your virus warnings from mail messages like this 
and don't pass them on, get them from a bonafide antivirus site. 

URGENT VIRUS ALERT
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The TROJ_VOTE.A e-mail virus has been identified currently spreading
in-the-wild.

This email is being sent to raise your awareness of the TROJ_VOTE.A virus,
which is spreading.  It contains the following:

Subject: Fwd:Peace BeTween AmeriCa And IsLam !

Message Body: Hi!
iS iT A waR Against AmeriCa Or IsLam!
Let's Vote To Live in Peace!

Attachment: WTC.EXE

If you receive an email with an attachment of "WTC.EXE", or the subject
line of  Fwd:Peace BeTween AmeriCa And IsLam ! DO NOT EXECUTE THE
ATTACHMENT.   DELETE THIS MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY AND EMPTY YOUR TRASH ON YOUR
E-MAIL ACCOUNT.

WTC Face In The Smoke

The picture of the burning World Trade Center with a face in the smoke has been making the 
rounds of the Internet after the tragedy on September 11. Many people have tried to read 
things into it, calling it the face of the Devil or Christ crying in anguish. However, you should 
keep in mind that it is just smoke that seems to look like a face in the same way that clouds 
often look like people, fish, boats, etc. What you make of it is up to you. 

As best I can tell, the photo is authentic. It was photographed by Mark Phillips and sold to 
Associated Press. You can see the photo on Mark Phillips website, www.stellarimages.com
along with his statements. The image was also captured on video by CNN. 

9 News in Denver has a copy of the photo plus a discussion with Mark Phillips about the photo.

Firefighter's Day Petition

This story is true and was verified by the New York Post. While this proposal has merit, 
an Internet petition generally has little validity and little effect because it is so easy to 
forge. If you really want to do something like this, create a real paper petition with real 
signatures including names and addresses so they can be validated. New York Post Article

Please read:
"I lost my Dad on September 11th; he was Chief Edward Geraghty, Battalion 9,
New York City Fire Department. He lost his life with many other heroes that
day, victims of the terrorists. Firefighters from all over have come to the
aid and rescue of the tragedy in New York and Washington, D.C. Many
firefighters have lost their lives to save someone else's; the truth of the
matter is, they do this every single day. They truly are heroes. I know many
people feel helpless, especially those who live far from NYC and D.C. We all
want to do something, show our appreciation, our support. I think we can...

In honor of the bravery, courage and determination of American firefighters
and police officers, there should be a day in our nation to celebrate and
appreciate their hard-work and never-ending passion for saving lives. I
think we should honor all those other heroes who still live today. I'm
starting a petition for a National Firefighters Day, or National
Firefighters and Police Officers Day!

Will you help make every September 11th "National Firefighters
Day"/"National Firefighters & Police Officers Day"?

Please join me!"
Thank you.

Connor Geraghty, age 14, Rockville Centre, New York (I Love u, DAD!!)

Appreciate Your Freedom Message

This Department of Defense site does indeed exist and you can list your name there to be 
sent on to our soldiers. 

Defend America
 
 

Subject: Appreciate Your Freedom


 If you are so inclined, visit the Department of Defense 
web page below and sign a brief message thanking the men 
and women of the U.S. military services for defending our 
freedom.

 The compiled list of names will be sent out to our soldiers 
at the end of the month.  7/4/02

 So far, there are only about 230,000 names, A shame.   It
is National Military Appreciation Month (please pass it on
to your email friends)

http://www.defendamerica.mil/nmam.html

Outback in Afghanistan Story

This one is real. The e-mail rumor was taken almost verbatim from a July 2, 2002
St. Petersburg Times article by Tamara Lush. Well done Outback! 

Here's another one Air Force Link.
 
 

Subject: Outback in Afghanistan

Heaven In Time Of War: 6,700 Ribeyes 

For troops in Kandahar, comfort is an Outback meal delivered 
on a C-17. But for those traveling to prepare the meal, it's a 
nerve-wracking mission. The rumor started about a month ago. 
It spread through the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan 
like a dust storm in Kandahar. Nobody really believed it, 
because it sounded too good to be true. The Outback Steakhouse 
people were coming. And they were bringing food. 

Members of the 101st Airborne, like all of the troops in 
Afghanistan, have been eating meals such as T-rations, food 
that is sealed in large tin containers. The entire container 
has to be boiled to heat the food. Powdered eggs the color of 
sand are a common T-ration breakfast entree. The possibility 
of ribeye steaks, grilled shrimp and, best of all, a deep-fried 
Bloomin' Onion, had them understandably excited. About 3 a.m. 
on June 18, a C-17 landed at the Kandahar Airport. On board were 
15 men and women in white Outback T-Shirts. And a giant cooler. 
It contained 6,700 steaks, 30,000 shrimp and 3,000 giant onions. 
"Enough to feed 6,700 troops," said Dave Ellis, Outback's director 
of research and development. 

They also unloaded 13,400 cans of O'Douls, a nonalcoholic beer. 
Ellis wanted to bring Budweiser, but alcohol is forbidden on the 
base. The idea of feeding the troops was born a few months ago, 
when Outback CEO Chris Sullivan was at a social event with U.S. 
Army Gen. Tommy Franks. Sullivan "thought it would be neat to 
serve the troops a steak dinner and a Bloomin' Onion," Ellis 
said. Franks thought so, too. Ellis worked with Central Command 
at MacDill Air Force Base to figure out how to transport the 
enormous dinner and get military clearance for 15 people and cook 
in a war zone in the middle of the desert. The employees came from 
Outbacks around the country; Ellis is based in the company's 
headquarters in Tampa. Most of the food was donated to Outback 
by the restaurant's vendors; the rest was paid for by Outback. 
It took nearly three days to fly to Kandahar. The group stopped 
in Germany, then flew the eight hours to Afghanistan. Armed troops 
greeted the plane. "Nerve wracking," Ellis said. 

The Outback employees were in Kandahar for only three days. They 
were preparing food almost the entire time. That posed some 
special challenges in the 115-degree heat. Ellis and the other 
employees wore water-filled backpacks called "camelbacks" so 
they could constantly rehydrate. In between their tent and the 
kitchen, they were told not to stray off the gravel path or risk 
being killed by a land mine. And they were informed of the closest 
bunker to the kitchen, in case they were bombed. 

Base officials also pointed out the area's infamous sights: where 
American Taliban member John Walker Lindh was held. Where a firefight 
happened a few weeks ago. Where Osama Bin Laden's troops had trained 
nearby. "You could sense the evil," Ellis said. Watching the troops 
in action and seeing their Spartan lifestyle made Ellis realize the 
sacrifices they had made for the United States. "It gave me a sense 
of pride," he said. 

The sightseeing was limited. Almost immediately, the employees set 
to work preparing the meal. They used the military's industrial-sized 
appliances. They served the thousands of troops in 70 minutes, Ellis 
said. After eating the ribeye steak, broccoli, grilled shrimp, rolls 
and Bloomin' Onions, they ended the meal with cheesecake for dessert. 
"They were so appreciative," Ellis said. "Comfort is very hard to 
come by over there." 

Since he has been back in the United States, Ellis has received dozens 
of e-mails from soldiers and their families thanking them for the meal. 
"I just wanted to say thank you for supporting the soldiers over here," 
said Sgt. 1st Class Ryan D. Field. "You have no idea how much it means 
to get anything from the states, but to have someone ship both great 
food and great people to prepare the food is awesome." One woman, a 
master corporal in the Canadian Forces who is serving in Operation 
Enduring Freedom, said it was the best meal she had all year. 

Nuclear Picnic Story

Or, How to light a barbecue in less than 3 seconds. I just couldn't resist including this one. 
It has been making the rounds for many years. You can visit George Goble's web page at 
Purdue University and see video and pictures of the lighting. 

Nuclear Picnic
by Dave Barry

The Boston Globe Magazine June 25, 1995

Today's culinary topic is: how to light a charcoal fire. Everybody loves a
backyard barbecue. For some reason, food just seems to taste better when it
has been cooked outdoors, where flies can lay eggs on it. But there's
nothing worse than trying to set fire to a pile of balky charcoal.

The average back-yard chef, wishing to cook hamburgers, tries to ignite the
charcoal via the squirt, light, and wait method, wherein you squirt lighter
fluid on a pile of briquettes, light the pile, then wait until they have
turned a uniform gray color. When I say "they have turned a uniform gray
color," I am referring to the hamburgers. The briquettes will remain as cold
and lifeless as Leonard Nimoy. The backyard chef will keep this up -
squirting, lighting, waiting; squirting, lighting, waiting - until the
bacterial level in the side dishes has reached the point where the potato
salad rises up from its bowl, Bloblike, and attempts to mate with the corn.
This is the signal that it's time to order Chinese food.

The problem is that modern charcoal, manufactured under strict consum-
er-safety guidelines, is one of the least-flammable substances on Earth. On
more than one occasion, quick-thinking individuals have ex- tinguished a
raging house fire by throwing charcoal on it. Your back- yard chef would be
just as successful trying to ignite a pile of rocks.

Is there a solution? Yes. There happens to be a technique that is guaranteed
to get your charcoal burning very, very quickly, although you should not
attempt this technique unless you meet the following criterion: You are a
complete idiot.

I found out about this technique from alert reader George Rasko, who sent me
a letter describing something he came across on the World Wide Web, a
computer network that you should definitely learn more about, because as you
read these words, your 11-year-old is downloading pornography from it.

By hooking into the World Wide Web, you can look at a variety of electronic
"pages," consisting of documents, pictures, and videos created by people all
over the world. One of these is a guy named (really) George Goble, a
computer person in the Purdue University engineering department. Each year,
Goble and a bunch of other engineers hold a picnic in West Lafayette,
Indiana, at which they cook hamburgers on a big grill. Being engineers, they
began looking for practical ways to speed up the charcoal-lighting process.

"We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer," Goble told me in a
telephone interview. "Then we figured out that it would light faster if we
used a vacuum cleaner."

If you know anything about (1) engineers and (2) guys in general, you know
what happened: The purpose of the charcoal-lighting shifted from cooking
hamburgers to seeing how fast they could light the charcoal.

From the vacuum cleaner, they escalated to using a propane torch, then an
acetylene torch. Then Goble started using compressed pure oxygen, which
caused the charcoal to burn much faster, because as you recall from
chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid combination of oxygen with
the cosine to form the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (or something along those
lines).

By this point, Goble was getting pretty good times. But in the world of
competitive charcoal-lighting, "pretty good" does not cut the mustard. Thus,
Goble hit upon the idea of using - get ready - liquid oxygen. This is the
form of oxygen used in rocket engines; it's 295 degrees below zero and 600
times as dense as regular oxygen. In terms of releasing energy, pouring
liquid oxygen on charcoal is the equiva- lent of throwing a live squirrel
into a room containing 50 million Labrador retrievers. On Gobel's World Wide
Web page (the address is http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/), you can see actual
photographs and a video of Goble using a bucket attached to a 10-foot-long
wooden handle to dump 3 gallons of liquid oxygen (not sold in stores) onto a
grill containing 60 pounds of charcoal and a lit cigarette for ignition.
What follows is the most impressive charcoal-lighting I have ever seen,
featuring a large fireball that, according to Goble, reached 10,000 degrees
Fahrenheit. The charcoal was ready for cooking in - this has to be a world
record - 3 seconds.

There's also a photo of what happened when Goble used the same technique on
a flimsy $2.88 discount-store grill. All that's left is a circle of charcoal
with a few shreds of metal in it. "Basically, the grill vapor- ized," said

Goble. "We were thinking of returning it to the store for a refund."

Looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an American, all choked up
with gratitude at the fact that I do not live anywhere near the engineers'
picnic site. But also, I was proud of my country for producing guys who can
be ready to barbecue in less time than it takes for guys in less-advanced
nations, such as France, to spit.

Will the 3-second barrier ever be broken? Will engineers come up with a new,
more powerful charcoal-lighting technology? It's something for all of us to
ponder this summer as we sit outside, chewing our hamburgers, every now and
then glancing in the direction of West Lafayette, Indiana, looking for a
mushroom cloud.

Exploding Whale Story

Here is another one that I cannot resist including. The exploding whale story has also been 
going around for years and has its own website. The actual event occurred in 1970 in Oregon. 
Video of the event is available on the Exploding Whale website.

I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on videotape. 
The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon, which sent a reporter out to 
cover the removal of a 45-foot, eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the 
beach. The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed upon the 
Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales 
are very similar in the sense of being large objects.

So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan -- remember, I am 
not making this up -- of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking here 
was that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be eaten by sea 
gulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal.

So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of dynamite 
next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of understatement 
when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in 
the history of the universe. First you see the whale carcass disappear in a huge 
blast of smoke and flame. Then you hear the happy spectators shouting "Yayy!" 
and "Whee!" Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound like 
"splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces of... MY GOD!" 
Something smears the camera lens.

Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation suddenly 
gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere." 
One piece caved in the roof of a car parked more than a quarter of a mile away. 
Remaining on the beach were several rotting whale sectors the size of 
condominium units. There was no sign of the sea gulls, who had no doubt 
permanently relocated in Brazil. This is a very sobering videotape. Here at the 
institute we watch it often, especially at parties. But this is no time for 
gaiety. This is a time to get hold of the folks at the Oregon State Highway 
division and ask them, when they get done cleaning up the beaches, to give us an 
estimate on the US Capitol.

Utah remembers the victims of
September 11, 2001

I never heard or saw anything about this in the media.  I was going to the bank when I saw this.  I went home, got my wife Linda, and came back with a camera.  Below is my best, though inadequate, attempt to share the experience with you.....

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Charlie Daniels Speaks out on Camp X-Ray

October 2002

This one is true. It and a lot of other commentaries by Charlie Daniels can be read in the soapbox area of his website.

The Straight Scoop

I’ve just returned from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Air Station base where we did three shows for the troops and toured several locations around the post visiting with some of the finest military personnel on planet earth. The kids seemed to really enjoy the shows and especially liked “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s A Flag” and “In America”. We had a great time with them. We saw Camp X-Ray, where the Taliban detainees are being held only from a distance, but I picked up a lot of what’s going on there from talking with a lot of different people.

The truth of the matter is that this operation is under a microscope. The Red Cross has an on site presence there and watches everything that goes on very closely. The media is not telling you the whole truth about what’s going on over there.

The truth is that these scum bags are not only being treated humanely, but they are probably better off healthwise and medically than they’ve ever been in their lives They are fed well, able to take showers and receive state of the art medical care. And have their own Moslem chaplain. I saw several of them in a field hospital ward where they were being treated in a state of the art medical facility.

Now let’s talk about the way they treat our people. First of all, they have to be watched constantly. These people are committed and wanton murderers who are willing to die just to kill someone else. One of the doctors told me that when they had Taliban in the hospital the staff had to really be careful with needles, pens and anything else which could possibly be used as a weapon. They also throw their excrement and urine on the troops who are guarding them. And our guys and gals have shown great restrain in not retaliating.

We are spending over a million dollars a day maintaining and guarding these nasty killers and anyone who wants to see them brought to the U.S.A. for trial is either out of their heads or a lawyer looking for money and notoriety. Or both. I wish that the media and the Red Cross and all the rest of the people who are so worried about these criminals would realize that this is not a troop of errant Boy Scouts. These are killers of the worst kind. They don’t need protection from us, we need protection from them. If you don’t get anything else out of this soapbox, please try to realize that when you see news coverage much of the time you’re not getting the whole story, but an account filtered through a liberal mindset with an agenda.

We have two fights on our hands, the war against terror and the one against the loudmouthed lawyers and left wing media who would sap the strength from the American public by making us believe that we’re losing the war or doing something wrong in fighting it. Remember these are the same people who told us that Saddam Hussein's Republican guard was going to be an all but invincible enemy and that our smart bombs and other weapons were not really as good as the military said that they were. They also took up for Bill Clinton while he was cavorting around the Oval office with Monica Lewinsky while the terrorists were gaining strength and bombing our Embassies and dragging the bodies of dead American heroes around the dusty streets of Somalia. It’s a shame that we can’t have an unbiased media who would just report the truth and let us make up our own minds. Here I must commend Fox News for presenting both sides much better than the other networks. They are leaving the other cable networks in the dust. People like being told the truth.

Our military not only needs but deserves our support. Let’s give it to them. The next time you read a media account about the bad treatment of the Taliban in Cuba, remember what I told you. Been there done that.

Footnote: I got an e-mail from a rather irate first cousin of mine the other day who has a daughter who’s a lawyer and she seemed to think that I was painting all lawyers with the same brush. Please understand that I’m not doing that at all. That would be like saying that all musicians were drug addicts. There are a lot of good and honest attorneys out there. I happen to have one of them. But it seems that they never get any airtime. It’s always the radicals who get their opinions heard. Who fight the idea of the military tribunals and site The Constitution and the integrity of America as their source of justifying their opinions. Well, first of all The Constitution says ” We the people of the United States”, it doesn’t mention any other country. And secondly as far as integrity is concerned, I don’t think some of these folks would know integrity if it bit them in the posterior.

What do you think?

God Bless America
Charlie Daniels

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